"Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe" - Sumner Redstone
That quote was on a friend’s blog. An athlete I coach copied it and posted it on her blog, she liked it. I don’t. I don’t like it at all.
I thought maybe it was just me, so I asked a couple of friends of mine what they thought about it. They both didn’t agree with the quote. One said:
“Success is built on success”
The other one said:
“Success is build on all kinds of shit”
(I’ll leave you to guess which one is a coach…)
I tend to agree with these last two quotes. Success is built on success. SUCCESS, all caps, achieving an important goal, is built on smaller little successes. The everyday victories on the everyday battles we all have to face. You might not win them all, but you have to win most in order to succeed.
Failure might be a starting point for success, it might provide the frustration that turns into motivation to get back on track towards success. But without the everyday little successes, the daily little victories, you will never succeed. You can’t expect to go from failure to failure and in the end, miraculous succeed.
The second “quote” is also true. There are a lot of factors that will influence success. Sometime success will come from unlikely conditions. Sometimes it will be unexpected. But looking back, if you look closely, you will see all those little victories lined up behind it.
Monday, May 26, 2008
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5 comments:
what does one learn from failures? Simply that that method or process did not work? Great! So how am i supposed to know that the next one i try will work? I could care less about what doesn't work (what failures teach you), I'd rather concern myself with what does work (success) and learn from that.
Mark,
You pose the questions and you answer them, this is great, thanks!
I want to build my home with bricks of success!! And with the woods of happiness!! High atop the hill of enlightenment!!
What he said.
I think success is what you make of any situation. A quote I read almost daily posted at the local gym says "You must expect things of yourself before you succeed" (I think that's what it says?) It always reminds me to expect of myself what I want out of life.
Tracy
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